Experimental testing of the Blind Ocean Acoustic Tomography concept

S.M. Jesus and C.Soares sjesus@ualg.pt and csoares@ualg.pt
SiPLAB-FCT, Universidade do Algarve
Faro, Portugal
J. Onofre mesquita.onofre@hidrografico.pt
Instituto Hidrografico
Lisboa, Portugal
E. Coelho
coelho@saclantc.nato.int
SACLANT Undersea Research Centre
La Spezia, Italy
P. Picco
picco@estosf.santateresa.enea.it
ENEA, Santa Teresa
Italia

Comments: download pdf file .
Ref.: Proc. Acoustic Variability Conference, Ed. Jensen and Pace, Kluwer Dortrech, (ISBN 0-4020-0816-3), p. 433-440, Lerici, Italy, 2002.

Abstract : Blind Ocean Acoustic Tomography (BOAT) is an ocean remote exploration concept similar to acoustic tomography but where both the emitted signal waveform and the source position are unknown. BOAT consists of  a minimal environmental model of the area, a broadband matched-field processor and a genetic algorithm search procedure. This paper presents the results obtained with BOAT on part of the data set acquired during the INTIFANTE'00 sea trial, where an acoustic source was towed along both range independent and range dependent paths, with source-receiver ranges varying from 500 m up to 5.5 km and water depths varying from 70 to 120 m. The results obtained on several hours of data, show that source range and depth can be used as focalizing parameters, together with the Bartlett  power to indicate model fitness. Using this three parameters it becomes clear  when the environment is ``in focus'' and when it is ``out of focus'' leading to realiable estimates of the geometric and environmental parameters under estimation

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: this work was partially supported by projects INTIMATE, ATOMS and TOMPACO from CNR, Italy.